The seismic impact of Manchester City’s guilty verdict on 114 of their 115 charges will reach as far and wide as arguably anything in football history, including the legacy of Pep Guardiola.
The former Manchester City boss made his first return to the Etihad Stadium following his summer departure for their 4-2 loss to Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League on Tuesday night. The timing of it was not lost on anyone.
Regardless of whether or not City somehow get off on appeal or a technicality, the Catalan will be forever tainted and surely can’t allow this to be the final act of his managerial career. Amid the infinite questions surrounding the case, sanctions and everything else, one is: what’s next for Guardiola?
Manchester City's charges cloud Pep Guardiola's whole career
First will be the continued full support of City and everyone connected to the case. In the days after the news that rocked the game, he made it crystal clear where he stood on the issue and backed up by sitting behind the embattled and shamed duo of Khaldoon Al Mubarek and Ferran Soriano on Tuesday night.
While that may seem incredibly hypocritical given he regularly said he would accept any verdict and once claimed, “If you lie to me, the day after I am not here. I will be out, and I will not be your friend any more”, it’s not difficult to see why Guardiola has taken this stance.
If he were to admit to City’s guilt on committing industrial-level financial cheating from 2009 to 2018, he would be admitting that every single one of the 20 trophies won in his 10 years at the club – including six Premier League titles and a Champions League – were tainted, tarnished and totally irrelevant.
Given he spent three more years at City than he did at Barcelona and Bayern Munich combined, it would be effectively erasing close to 60 per cent of his time on the touchline regardless of the obvious brilliance of both his coaching and his teams.
And that’s before we even get started on what might come from the ongoing Negreira case centring on payments from Barça to the former vice president of Spain's Technical Committee of Referees. Safe to say, it’s been an autumn of discontent for Guardiola.
It’s unlikely to get any better for him in the winter months as the appeal plays out, with City’s chances of a reprieve looking slim at the absolute best. He’s already set for a year out of the game, having turned down the Italy national team job citing rest and personal reasons.
At 55, he should theoretically have plenty of years left on the touchline, and for a complete football obsessive, what else would he do in the decades to come?
Guardiola has never managed a small club or one with limited resources, which is often held against him when compared to his three greatest career rivals, Sir Alex Ferguson, Jose Mourinho and Jurgen Klopp.
All three near-built clubs from the ground up, restored them to their former glories and won the biggest prizes in the game without the biggest budgets. It’s a somewhat harsh appraisal of Guardiola given he started with Barça and quickly became the most in-demand manager on the globe. Los Cules may have won the Champions League just two years prior to his arrival but the transformation was remarkable.
There’s also the irony that any idea of Guardiola doing that now is near-impossible, more than a little bit in part due to the state ownership of City and PSG and everything that comes with that. The game is completely distorted with a European Super League of finances long in place.
Serie A’s demise has come alongside that, presenting potential landing spots for Pep. His European playing career did end in Italy – not without its own scandal – so he clearly has an affinity for the peninsula. Entertaining the Azzurri job spoke further to that.
The great task there is restoring either Juventus or Milan to the top table. Both clubs, fittingly, are full of drama, so would suit Guardiola’s ongoing arc. There’s been no Italian Champions League winner since Mourinho with Inter Milan in 2010 and Juve have lost five finals since last lifting the trophy 30 years ago. Talk about a career mode challenge.
A return to Barcelona can never be ruled out, while making Manchester United great again would be the perfect next bizarre storyline for the ever-developing Premier League soap opera.
We can rule out the Spanish job on account of their ongoing dominance and possibly his own Catalan ties. Brazil and England are the two biggest jobs and tasks, and Guardiola has been linked to both jobs. It would require either Carlo Ancelotti stepping down or Thomas Tuchel failing to win the Euros in 2028. Neither is too far-fetched.
Whatever may come for City in the coming weeks, months and years, it will always be attached to Guardiola no matter the level of his greatness. What comes for him may be the sport’s next big plotline.
